Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbam here with the story of the Emu War.
Speaker 1: It begins after World War One, when soldiers returned home
Speaker 1: to Australia. The government was eager to show its support
Speaker 1: for veterans. Take land. The government said, grow wheat and
Speaker 1: we'll pay handsomely for it. It was a mission for
Speaker 1: the bright eyed and hopeful, for men eager to cultivate
Speaker 1: their futures. As they cultivated the soil in Western Australia,
Speaker 1: you could say the plan was flawed from the start.
Speaker 1: The government had nine hectares that's two two thousand acres
Speaker 1: to go around, but that wasn't enough for the nearly
Speaker 1: five thousand veterans who wanted it. Land was doled out
Speaker 1: as it became available, and the choicest lots were given
Speaker 1: away first. The remaining veterans got land in Perth, which
Speaker 1: was not ideal for farming. What's more, in the years
Speaker 1: that followed the initial land hand out in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, Western Australia combated drought, frost, and a significant
Speaker 1: rabbit infestation. While veterans labored against the elements and the wildlife.
Speaker 1: Mounting financial challenges from the Great Depression threatened to undercut
Speaker 1: all they'd been promised. The Australian government had initially pledged
Speaker 1: to pay the veterans four shillings per bushel of wheat,
Speaker 1: but the bill tied to that sum was killed in
Speaker 1: the Senate. Another bill proposing three shillings per bushel actually passed,
Speaker 1: but the veterans were never paid. At last, in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, the Wheat Bounty Act made good on the
Speaker 1: government's promise to pay for wheat at the staggeringly low
Speaker 1: price of four and a half pence per bushel. Let's
Speaker 1: put this in perspective. Pence is equivalent to pennies. A
Speaker 1: shilling is twelve pence, and there are twenty shillings in
Speaker 1: a pound. In today's market, one British pound is worth
Speaker 1: about a buck fifty. So these veterans were being promised
Speaker 1: smallish sums of money to start, and delivered way less,
Speaker 1: originally promised a fifth of a pound per bushel, and
Speaker 1: settling for just one twentieth of a pound per bushel,
Speaker 1: ten times less than what was promised. However, by this
Speaker 1: point the veterans were desperate to make money. Off of
Speaker 1: their wheat crops, and the stage was set for a
Speaker 1: modestly fruitful harvest. No one could have anticipated what happened next.
Speaker 1: In the annals of history, there's perhaps no stranger of
Speaker 1: foe that the Australian emu, a flightless bird that can
Speaker 1: stand about six and a half feet that's two meters
Speaker 1: tall and way close to a hundred pounds. That's fort
Speaker 1: and at an even stranger battle of man with machine
Speaker 1: gun versus giant bird. The giant bird one. But in
Speaker 1: warfare it's essential to know the enemy. So let's pause
Speaker 1: and examine the bird. The dogged the veterans. We spoke
Speaker 1: with Eric Slovak, bird keeper at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.
Speaker 1: He said EMUs are solitary for the most part. They
Speaker 1: do get together in breeding seasons, but EMUs would prefer
Speaker 1: to be by themselves. The exception is when they're foraging.
Speaker 1: Slovak likens that behavior to humans going out solo to
Speaker 1: a fast food lunch. He said, you're at McDonald's around
Speaker 1: lots of people, but you're not socializing. You're just there
Speaker 1: for the food. Okay, So they're big, solitary, hungry birds,
Speaker 1: not much of a threat right, um, multiply that emu
Speaker 1: you're envisioning by twenty thousand. That's how many descended upon
Speaker 1: Western Australia in nineteen thirty two. Until a decade earlier,
Speaker 1: in mus had been a protected species. After that time,
Speaker 1: they were reclassified as vermin. Slovak explained, they'll eat anything
Speaker 1: they can get their mouths on without hunting their grazers.
Speaker 1: They like nuts and berries, baby grasses, which brings us
Speaker 1: back to wheat. Yep, they'll eat that, faced with a
Speaker 1: seemingly endless buffet of it. The opportunistic birds homed in
Speaker 1: on the veterans plots beaten down by weather at a
Speaker 1: volatile financial market, the veterans leaned hard on the government.
Speaker 1: Help us, they implored, so one Major GPW. Meredith wound
Speaker 1: up leading a military offensive against the EMUs. But there
Speaker 1: were a few conditions. The veterans had to foot the
Speaker 1: bill for the ammunition. Lewis machine guns were used in
Speaker 1: EMU combat, and the veterans had to provide food and
Speaker 1: lodging for the men assigned to this curious mission. As
Speaker 1: a side note, a cinematographer Fox Movie Tone accompanied the
Speaker 1: military to fill the EMU effort. Historians assumed the footage
Speaker 1: would have been used in propaganda films to illustrate how
Speaker 1: the government was aiding its veterans. But spoiler alert, the
Speaker 1: mission didn't go exactly as planned. Armed with the knowledge
Speaker 1: that a slingshot can take down an ordinary bird, you
Speaker 1: might hazard a guess that a machine gun could wipe
Speaker 1: out EMUs easily, but you would be wrong. EMUs are
Speaker 1: made to run, and when shot out, they're going to panic,
Speaker 1: and they won't move in any reliable direction. And emo's legs,
Speaker 1: head and neck move with elegant fluidity while their bodies
Speaker 1: stay parallel to the ground. Slovak explained, the body it
Speaker 1: looks like a wave. The legs could left, the head
Speaker 1: goes to the right, and they run in all different
Speaker 1: directions like dropped marbles. Meredith and his men couldn't get
Speaker 1: a straight shot at the EMUs, who stayed out of
Speaker 1: range of machine guns, even when enterprising veterans suggested putting
Speaker 1: them on vehicles and pursuing the birds as they ran.
Speaker 1: The military wasted a ton of ammunition. Only two hundred
Speaker 1: birds of the twenty thousand were actually killed, and not
Speaker 1: only did the EMUs of aid the troops, they destroyed
Speaker 1: and more farmland in the process, tearing up the ground
Speaker 1: wherever they ran. The veterans were dispirited and their land
Speaker 1: was devastated. Meredith had a lot to answer for why
Speaker 1: had so much ammunition been wasted? And was the effort
Speaker 1: even humane? Then there was the matter of money. The
Speaker 1: veterans promised to pay for the ammo, but the mission
Speaker 1: ultimately failed. Could the sun be forgiven? This example of
Speaker 1: ridiculous history can't be tied up conclusively with a tidy bow,
Speaker 1: and some details such as who was ultimately held responsible
Speaker 1: for the cost of the ammunition, are unclear. We do
Speaker 1: know that the veterans learned painfully from past performance that rifles,
Speaker 1: not machine guns, were the best way to handle nuisance EMUs.
Speaker 1: They continued their war in a one to one battle
Speaker 1: Veteran against bird, and the Australian government later placed a
Speaker 1: bounty on EMUs to help control the population. But finally,
Speaker 1: we do suspect that the Fox cinematographer got epic b
Speaker 1: roll while on location. Today's episode was writen by Candice
Speaker 1: Gibson and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: on this and lots of other ridiculous history. Visit our
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